[BTS] [Report] First imm cuir rush and sub-t300 space

[Fish Man]

After giving up installing BUFFY for HoF saves, I decided to take another shot at immortal, this time with some alternate playstyles that I haven't tried in a while. I played an old NC game (this one, specifically) and decided to praet-rush Ragnar. My cap had pretty much no food so I didn't whip it ever pretty much, but other than that the land I ended up with was all I could ask for.

The early war went off without a hitch, and then I used GLib to bulb my way into cuirs, spending a GS on philo, edu, and lib, respectively. After assembling a stack of 50 of those things, I took on Sitting Bull and his dreaded CG3 longbows...but this time, I had a trick up my sleeve. I popped a Great Spy around 800 AD, and was disappointed I didn't get someone more useful, but then I had an idea...infiltrate Sitting Bull to get +3000 EP, then build spies as sleeper agents and station them in the cities where I saw he kept his biggest stacks. Then, when the time came, declare, foment revolt to reduce cultural defenses to 0, and crush his army. I also decided to attack him on two fronts, which sufficiently confused him I think, as he kept shuffling longbows from city to city...not the smartest thing to do, if you know what I mean .

So the war wrapped up neatly at around 1350 AD, and I had wiped him off the face of the map, and ended up with ultra juicy Cahokia and his dozen or so pretty awesome cities. Another trick I used: when cities come out of resistance and are starving and unhappy, immediately dry-whip a granary or library or both, even. This gets rid of the pop that are going to die anyways, actually increases commerce because some unhappiness modifiers go higher the more pop there is in a city, and makes future tiles worked or pop whipped more efficient right off the bat. At this point I had met the other continent, gotten communism and started running SP + rep, and was well on my way to assembly line. After that, though, I made a short detour to rifling - to upgrade some of my cuirs to caves and roll over/easily vassal Toku, removing the last threat on my continent. With 32 cities under my belt it was only a matter of time before I started 4 and 3-turning techs. All was going well, until...

I saw a stack of 5 galleons on my border...dammit Shaka! He vassaled Nappy and was beating Monty up pretty hard before that, so I knew I had to do something. I gave him a tech to get him to pleased, begged 1 gold to delay, and then moved my army to where I think his army would teleport after the peace treaty ended - a small patch of unclaimed land in the middle of my territory that I would proceed to surround with the still sizeable remainder of my cav army and some arty/infantry I built. And my gambit paid off - the second peace wore off, he declared, his troops got teleported to that area where they were encircled and slaughtered by my vets. Still he would not make peace...so I bribed Monty to war against (which turned out to be a bad idea because the latter started losing cities...really quick).

I upgraded some galleons and triremes to transports and destroyers and had a field day murdering any frigates and SoTL that came close. Built Three Gorges Dam and finished the spaceship as usual, completing the last parts with a Golden Age. Turn 281 launch, turn 291 win...and a turn after, Monty capitulated to Shaka . Still, though, I won handily, and with the amount of nukes I'd lobbed at the other continent at that point (yes...I found the hammers and time to build Manhattan Project) I doubt he'd win a protracted war against me.

Just some more notes on overall strategy: tech order after cuirs was bulb printing press -> 1/2 bulb astro -> communism rush -> constitution -> economics to get the GM that was still available -> assembly line -> rifles -> railroad -> electricity -> industrialism -> rocketry -> railroad -> superconductors -> plastics -> mass media (for Cristo Redentor to save 3 turns on civic changes) -> fusion -> genetics -> composites -> ecology. Toku as a vassal was actually a solid techer and great help cuz he fed me democracy, biology, and medicine . Oh...and I only had one turn of anarchy for this entire game (for switching into slavery) since I timed all other civic/religion changes with golden ages or already had Cristo Redentor at the end.

Overall, this was a very fun game, and a bunch of firsts for me - first praet/cuir rush on immortal, first sub-t300 science victory on immortal, first sub-t300 space without using financial or building oracle as a crutch. 10/10 would recommend and play again. Now to study for midterms next week....

 

[Macksideshow]

Thanks Undefeatable, I enjoyed the write up. Sounds like a fun game.

 

[lymond]

Don’t give up

 

[intutama]

Congrats on your win!

I always get undecided on what to do after a cuirasser rush, usually after this I beeline Rifling then Steel and just try to outproduce whatever civ might still be a problem, but on Continents it's a pain in the ass to transport the units.. I think your plan was to go for Communism and then switch to a workshop economy, using hammers to tech, right?

 

[Fish Man]

Congrats on your win!

I always get undecided on what to do after a cuirasser rush, usually after this I beeline Rifling then Steel and just try to outproduce whatever civ might still be a problem, but on Continents it's a pain in the ass to transport the units.. I think your plan was to go for Communism and then switch to a workshop economy, using hammers to tech, right?

Yep. I've always preferred space wins to any other VC, honestly, mostly because I like the idea of a fast launch but also because I don't want to micro a million units in the endgame. I think that I've gotten SP space colony wins to a tee these days.

 

[intutama]

I don't know, starting to move all workers to put workshops everywhere looks like more micromanaging to me With domination I can just select all cities and rush-build whatever unit they're producing. Not efficient, but simple!

 

[Fish Man]

I don't know, starting to move all workers to put workshops everywhere looks like more micromanaging to me With domination I can just select all cities and rush-build whatever unit they're producing. Not efficient, but simple!

The secret is to start workshopping all non-river flat tiles at about the time you get printing press, such that by the time communism rolls around you can just switch to SP for instawin. Of course this needs a worker-city ratio of 1.5-2:1, so make sure you got enough of them to go around, but still - managing 30 workers beats managing 100 units by far, especially how for some reason moving workers around seems easier on the eyes and hands as well as the mind (don't have to think about combat odds or tactics anymore...just spam improvements).

 

[intutama]

Well I gave it a try and could manage a turn 351 victory I had 25 cities and was around 2500 beakers/turn average after industrialisation I think, but it just took ages to get all the techs (building spaceship parts was easy, I could 4 or 5 turns even the big ones). I'm not sure if I was doing anything wrong, I ran all the civics for workshops and science... But I was very late generally to tech because I had to horse rush my neighbor because of a weak start, and he also didn't have good land... So I just conquiered all his cities and then tried to recover my economy, which wasn't so easy because goddamn Babylon didn't want to trade anything with me even at pleased ("we don't want to trade this yet"). So in the end I could cuirassier rush him only in 1400 AD or so, which shows how late I was.

Science victory from time to time is fun... But on continent I'd rather try to get a huge population and get a diplomatic win well everyone has their taste

 

[Pangaea]

Although they do take a looooot of time, I also really like space wins. Means I get to enjoy the whole tech tree and nurture the builder in me

Worker micro can be a pain, sure, but warfare is a big pain too, and overall takes more time while acting them out. Attack with this unit or that one, where to move, what promos to take, when to heal, what route to take, which city next -- etc. So much to consider. Of course, if you just spam Cuirs+Cavs it gets easier, and those games can be fun. Whip whenever you can, send them to the front, kill whatever is in front of you

What I find most boring by far is culture. Always seems like there is nothing to do, just keep building culture buildings (and later culture), hit next turn, and cross your fingers you don't get DOWed. Very nerve-wrecking too.

Religious wins too, but that's more because I think of it as an exploit, or at least cheesy. Wish it wasn't in the game tbh. The only good thing about the Apostolic Palace mechanic is the temple hammers.

 

[elmurcis]

I had very nice Space Race game (Deity, NTT, Mara) with Permanent Alliances.... Well, in general I got "my budy" Charlie locked-up (Friendly) from very early of game and did block ~15% of land to settle step by step). Only ever war (and just defense) I had when Zara did some tiny DoW (few turns later he lost to Charlie who was plotting already vs Zara and became vassal). Late game I was ready for Mining and stuff but... Damm, when I had some insight of Charlie cities... screw this - got Mining to Charlie core cities and I built just some extra parts that left after tech complete turn (like Casing) and was just clapping hands for our nice team